Catch Methodology
by Ennied
Summary: ReidxOC. An attempt at a realistic ReidxOC, in which Reid is a TA in his last semester at CalTech and catches the acute attention of one of his students. Rated M for sex.
1. Part I

A/n: Hello there! This story started off as a challenge from a friend to write a scenario with Reid as a college student partaking in some more "mature" relations. And then it was decided that, according to the wacky CM timeline, that Reid would be nineteen in his last year of college. And so this story began as my first attempt at writing NC-17. But Reid would have to have an OC with whom he partook in these relations, so the story then morphed into a desperate attempt to write a realistic Reid/OC oneshot that falls into the canon with minimal invasiveness. I know what you're thinking, that nobody likes Reid/OC fics (because nobody does), but... well. It was worth a shot. So here you go!

As of right now, this story is done at four chapters! I couldn't decide whether or not I needed an epilogue. You decide.

Acknowledgements: In order to write this story, I studied just about every Reid-related smut that I could get my hands on, especially those of l3petitemort and kuriadalmatia. Special thanks to Caitlin for her input in the early stages of this story, and to Ginny for being so wonderfully encouraging!

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit off of this story.

Enjoy!

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><p><em>Catch Methodology <em>

**Part I**

"But Dr. Michelson, I don't understand. There's no prerequisite for the PhD that has anything to do with teaching, and honestly I—"

"Spencer—"

"I could always take a public speaking class instead—?"

"Spencer, please."

Spencer cut his panicked ramble as his advisor lifted a hand. Dr. Grant Michelson was intimidating enough without trying—broad-shouldered and dark, he towered above Spencer's eye level even when both men were sitting down. His crisp power suit spoke on its own without the many certificates framed against the wall behind him. Even on the best days, even when Dr. Michelson was giving him that rare purse-lipped smile, Spencer was relieved to leave his office. And right now, he had delivered what Spencer considered the worst news there could possibly be.

"Look Spencer, I understand that you're looking to wrap up your third Doctorate by the end of spring semester. I understand that. But I have a hard time believing that you could ever succeed in the FBI without a little… let's call it 'field experience'. Experience which cannot be fulfilled by a public speaking course."

Sitting back in his seat, Spencer swallowed back a dry heave and stared across the mahogany desk.

"If I should, um, refuse," he began slowly, choosing his words with the sort of care he reserved for mixing potentially explosive ingredients in the laboratory, "will there be any consequence?"

Dr. Michelson frowned. "From me? No. You know I can't force you to do any supplemental work. But trust me—" He set a palm down on the table and leaned forward just far enough to make Spencer lean away. "The skill set that you will develop is invaluable, especially when dealing with sensitive FBI cases. There's no use in pretending that you don't have a public speaking problem. Your Engineering dissertation defense was almost laughable—it's a good thing that your research was revolutionary, because your stage presence was so bad that I half expected them to reject you."

In the silence that followed Dr. Michelson's pointed comment, Spencer bowed his head so that his advisor could not see the embarrassed flush rising up his neck. Of course Dr. Michelson was right. If Spencer couldn't stand up in front of a group of professionals and deliver his own work with some level of confidence, how could he possibly teach groups of people about serial killers? Deliver profiles? Communicate with grieving families? He let go of the breath he'd been holding.

"Where do I have to begin?"

xXx

His first day as a Teaching Assistant began when Spencer woke up an hour early to make sure that his lesson plan was in order, only to discover that he was missing the agenda overview that his supervisor, Dr. Wagner, had given him during their final training session. Abandoning his ironing, he scoured the tiny apartment. He turned over half the file folders on his desk, dug elbow-deep in his trash bin, and finally resurfaced from beneath his bed with the slip of paper crinkled in one fist. How it had gotten there, he couldn't say. It must have fluttered away when he fell asleep at his desk the night previous and elbowed his folder off the edge. By the time he had reasoned this out, there was a smoky smell in the air.

He had left the iron on his new button-up. When he removed the flat iron and lifted his shirt to assess the damage, he could see out the window through the singed cotton.

This was how Spencer wound up five minutes late to class in a wrinkled, purple shirt and argyle sweater vest, both of which he had extracted from the bottom of his overflowing laundry hamper. It wasn't until he reached the classroom door that he realized his hands were shaking.

"They don't have to know your age," Dr. Wagner had said to him. "Just tell them you're working on your PhD in math and they won't question it. It's not often that teenagers make it into our graduate program, much less take on three doctorates."

Still Spencer doubted. Having grown about a foot and half since he was a thirteen-year-old freshman, he towered over most his age. Regardless, he felt quite diminished as he opened the classroom door and strode in, shrugging off his shoulder bag. His peers-gone-students sat in a line of desks that seemed to stretch out a mile back.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he said, and the last of the chatter drained away from his audience.

They watched impassively as he opened his bag and withdrew a stack of sheets, a file folder, and a box of chalk. He passed copies of the syllabus down each aisle. Once the shuffling had faded, he wiped his hands on his corduroy slacks and forced the thin-pressed line of his mouth into a smile.

"Hi everyone. This class is Calculus 2. If you don't belong in Calculus 2, you should probably check your course schedule again." Nobody moved. "Okay. Well, I guess that means you're in the right place! I'm Doctor Spencer Reid—uh, well, you can just call me Spencer. They generally don't advise that TA's be called by their first names, but—yes?"

A hand had risen up in the center row.

"If you're a PhD, why are you a TA and not a professor?" asked the hand's owner, a sandy-haired freshman boy.

"Oh! Well, I don't have my PhD in Mathematics yet," Spencer said. "I probably won't have it completed until at least March, and then I have to go through the presentation process and—well never mind, I'm getting off track. My Doctorates are in Engineering and Chemistry, so that's why."

Then came the mutterings, loud enough as a collective group for him to hear, but too jumbled for him to make out the individual comments. He could catch a fragment or two, but found himself too overwhelmed to speak until, finally, a girl sitting by the window called out loud enough to silence the rest of the students:

"_Three_ PhD's? How old are you, fifty?"

Spencer shook his head, already retreating toward his lesson notes. "It's not important. What we need to focus on now is calculus, so let me read the attendance and then we can get started…"

He had been expecting a colossal failure. Maybe even an uprising, where the students dragged him bodily from the room and told him never to return again. What he got instead was the feeling that half of his students were going to switch out of his class the moment they got out of it. Spencer had caught himself rambling on about descriptive statistics and famous mathematicians at least four times. He had also leaned against the chalkboard, which not only smudged his notes but also coated his back in a layer of yellow dust. By the time the last of the students had passed through the door, Spencer could feel the sweat seeping through his sweater. The legs of the wooden desk chair creaked as he collapsed backwards into it.

He would quit as soon as he could get down to Dr. Wagner's office. He didn't care that he was potentially jeopardizing his career in the FBI by losing a valuable lesson in public speaking and education—judging by the quivering in his knees, he wouldn't make it to the end of the semester without dying of embarrassment anyway. Spencer began gathering his things and shoving them into his bag as fast as he could.

"Spencer?" came a voice.

The box of chalk he'd been holding fell to the floor, where it burst open and sent the little cylinders rolling across the floor. Spencer and the student let out simultaneous gasps—his more of a petrified yelp—and at once the girl dropped to her knees before him.

"I am so sorry! I should have coughed or something," said the girl from the ground.

Still caught in surprise, he couldn't make himself bend to help her. Instead, he just stared at the top of her head as she gathered the broken bits of chalk into a pile and shoved them back into their paper box. She straightened up and pressed it into his hands, pink in the face.

"Sorry," she said again.

He shook his head to dismiss her apology. "It's not your fault. I'm just—"

Spencer puffed out the breath upon which he had almost choked, then in the silence studied the girl. She looked much the same the other freshman—tired from the 8 a.m. trek across campus, apprehensive at having to ask for help. Her dark hair curled back behind a thin plastic headband. As Spencer stared, her forced smile reminded him of his own discomfort.

"Helen Pazo, right?"

Her eyebrows rose. "You know my name."

"I'm—ah—a quick learner."

"With three PhDs, you must be," said the girl, now Helen. "But I was wondering… I'm really horrible at math—calc especially—so I wanted to ask if I could come to your office hours for extra help."

"Oh! Yes, of course… Or if my office hours don't work into your schedule, I'd be happy to meet with you by appointment."

"That would actually be even better; I was going to skip my Spanish lit class to make your hours, so not having to do that would be wonderful. Can you do Wednesdays at Millikan at 1 p.m?"

"That should work. I have a class earlier that morning, but otherwise I'm free."

"Great! Thank you so much."

Another pause. He had expected her to turn toward the door with her final comment. But when she continued to stand there, he began to wonder if he'd forgotten some final formula—whether it be a scheduling thing or a social cue, he couldn't quite tell.

"So, where are you from?" she asked.

Definitely a cue. The mystery became which one, and to what degree it should ring with him. He answered her question, despite his fear that this inquiry would delve off into other, more personal ones. Helen nodded as he explained the history of Las Vegas districts, a slight quirk on her mouth.

"I never knew that," she said, and he couldn't tell if she was teasing him. "I'm from Texas, so my Las Vegas knowledge goes about as far as how to operate a slot machine."

Now she shifted her pack on her shoulders. A yellow chalk handprint remained on the strap after she dropped her arm, and Spencer pointed to it.

"You've got chalk on you—uh, sorry about that."

Helen let out a surprised little "oh" as she looked down at her backpack. Rubbing her hands together she said, "Don't worry about it. And besides—" she chuckled, "your back is covered in about two times as much, so we're even."

Spencer craned his neck back, as if he could peer over his shoulder and assess the damage. "Yeah, that wasn't exactly on the lesson plan. I'm sure it'll get a few choice comments when I get to Dr. Wagner's office."

Immediately, Helen reached to grab his arm. "Here, let me."

He was too startled by her directness to shrink away from the physical contact, and thus turned wordlessly when her fingers grasped the sleeve of his shirt. He clamped his eyes shut, as if she were beating the back of his head with her fist instead of brushing the chalk dust off of his sweater. She started up by his shoulders, clearing the yellow patches away with a few light pats, stopping once she reached his middle back.

"That's better!" she said, and Spencer slowly turned to face her again. "Now you can worry less about Dr. Wagner and focus on teaching. I've heard that the trick to public speaking is not forgetting to breathe. Or imagining the audience in their underwear. Whatever works."

Smiling, Helen left the classroom with one final "See you on Wednesday!" as she went.

It was Monday. All thoughts of quitting had vanished from his mind, swept off like chalk dust from the board. Spencer's hands had gone numb.

xXx

Their Wednesday afternoon study sessions at the Millikan Library began harmlessly enough. Having always been the smartest kid in every classroom, giving extra help came almost as a reflex response. He and Helen met at the café where she liked to get a large coffee, then found the quietest table in the library and spread their books and papers out until the wood was barely invisible. The problem was that Spencer couldn't keep the conversation from derailing. This was the difference, the subtle change in current that he didn't perceive until after he had waded up to his elbows in it.

Helen asked about him, his work, his thoughts and interests. As she began to pry the tightly-bound pages of his history apart, Spencer began to paste hers together. She studied English literature in hope of joining CalTech's ESL program, then planned to teach English to Spanish-speaking grade schoolers.

"My father is from Mexico, so I was raised in a bilingual household and knew I wanted to do something with language. Originally I thought I wanted to be a speech-language pathologist. It would be cool to teach actors how to get the accents right for foreign languages, wouldn't it?" She paused to stir about a cup of sugar into her coffee while Spencer stared with his lips pursed. "But then I thought that it might be a waste when I could be helping little kids how to speak both languages, too. Well, that and I hated cell bio."

Spencer nodded eagerly. "Bilingualism is far less common than most people think. The critical period for language development tapers off around age six, so you'd be doing them a favor by teaching them early on in life!"

So went most of their study sessions. After three weeks of tutoring, with the first quiz creeping closer on the syllabus, Spencer knew most of Helen's life history in chronological order. In turn, she knew that he had graduated as valedictorian of his high school class (he had spared her his age and any questions following _that_ revelation, and she had not pestered him about it once he refused to answer the first time), that he preferred chemistry to engineering, and that he had been recruited for the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. If asked, Spencer would be unable to say how he let this discourse occur. He had tutored many students, and sometimes they had asked questions about his life plan. But the interest in Helen's voice, in her posture, had kept him from cutting across the conversation with his spiral-bound notebook.

Helen approached him after the first quiz and asked if he could also spare his Sunday afternoons. Spencer grew wary, for more often he left the library wondering where his hour had gone. But he accepted. He accepted before he considered that the hour might better be catered to his research paper, and the "Sure, absolutely" that dropped from his mouth made Helen's grin so broad that he didn't regret his decision until later that evening. And even then, when three in the morning had forced him to abandon his dissertation for the night, he lay in bed and thought that the extra session meant they were going to get serious about work. Now that they had transitioned through the acquainting process (and now that Helen had failed her first quiz), she would set her attention to calculus.

That same Sunday, in a sparsely-lit library alcove, Helen paused with her pencil halfway through a word. She tilted her chin to glance sidelong at him.

"Are you nervous about joining the FBI?"

His train of thought disrupted by her question, Spencer shrugged one shoulder. "I would assume that anyone who was going to study serial killers would be nervous. But honestly, my biggest fear at this point is not making it through Academy. Physical endurance has never been my forte."

"Do you… think you'll have to shoot anybody?"

Spencer blinked. "I hope not. But… it's possible, I suppose. I've never really thought about the bullet except in abstract. Gunshots seem much safer when they only exist to represent Newton's third law."

"I don't follow."

"May I borrow your pencil?"

When she nodded, Spencer took up the pencil and leaned over Helen's halo of flyaway curls to write an equation at the top of her worksheet.

"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts," he recited to her. "A gun fires; there's a recoil. You see, despite the smaller mass of the bullet, the force of the energy is equal. Equal and opposite."

It took him three whole seconds after he finished speaking to realize that his body position inhibited her from leaning away. Spencer wasn't sure how he'd gotten here, and was couldn't pull out of it now that he'd noticed. And once Helen turned into him, propping one elbow on the desk and turning her shoulders to mirror his, it took another second for Spencer to relent.

"Hmm…" said Helen, peering thoughtfully up at him while he struggled to reacquire function of his limbs. "That's actually pretty interesting."

xXx

**TBC.**


	2. Part II

A/n: See notes for chapter one for details!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Thanks for Reading!

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><p><strong>Part II<strong>

By the second quiz, Spencer began to seriously question what he and Helen had started. They had progressed well beyond the two hours a week, stopping to chat whenever their schedules crossed (and that seemed to happen more than it had in the first weeks of the semester). What troubled him was not that their meetings had yielded no improvement on Helen's academia, or even that the mounting loss of time during the day had kept him writing well past sunrise. The primary cause for his anxiety was that he enjoyed these meetings more every time, and more than appropriate. More than he could morally justify while he was supposed to be helping her improve her grade.

Spencer stared down at the "71/100" that he had circled on the corner of Helen's quiz, feeling guilty about the dream that had aroused him from sleep that morning.

xXx

Today's weather was miserable. Sixty five degrees, but so humid that Spencer's hair stuck to his forehead the moment he set out from his apartment. February was Pasadena's wettest month on average, and the skies were promising to deliver; gray hovered low over the campus, dense enough so that he couldn't see mountain ridges over the treetops.

He patched together a plan while half-jogging to meet Helen at the library, a speech that he could explain at her before quickly escaping. His schedule just didn't allow him to spare all this extra time anymore; he had to cut their meetings down to one extremely productive hour a week. It wasn't a choice. And spending less time with her in his direct line of sight should also keep her out of his subconscious (though he needn't explain that part to Helen).

Instead, he found her waiting for him just inside the front doors, a travel cup in either hand.

"You bought me coffee," he observed, confused but accepting the cup. "I don't really drink coffee."

"I don't understand how you got through undergrad without it, but it's time you learned," said Helen. "You've looked like hell all week, Spencer. There's only one solution to that."

"Aside from getting more sleep?"

He trailed behind Helen through the crowded lobby and sat down across from her at an empty table. But when he opened his mouth to begin his monologue, she tipped the lid of her coffee cup against his.

"Drink up!" she said. "I made it custom for you."

Spencer jerked his head down in a half-nod.

"Did you know," he said, "that coffee didn't catch on in Spanish-speaking countries, especially not in South America, until much later on in history? The first coffee seeds were planted in Brazil in 1792, even though the drink had been around as early as the seventeenth century."

"Interesting! Enough talking, more sipping."

"Okay, but don't take it personally if I spit up all over the table."

"I won't."

Tentatively, he lifted the plastic cup to his nose and breathed it in. His best memories of coffee were few and fleeting—while his father had consumed pot after pot before his early departure, his mother had insisted that the coffee industry existed only to lure its caffeine-dependant minions to expensive hard drugs. When his father left, Spencer tried brewing a pot himself, just for the smell of it. It took a week and a half for the blisters on his fingers to heal.

Spencer stuck mostly to tea after that. It wasn't quite so bitter, and was one of the few things he could make his mother with some level of confidence. But with Helen leaning forward against the table, her eyes eager and her smile assuring, Spencer thought that he could use the change.

He had been expecting harsh flavor, and almost dropped the cup when instead he tasted something super-sweet. Helen laughed aloud as he gagged in surprise. The sheer volume of sugar explained Helen's seemingly endless supply of energy.

"This isn't coffee—it tastes like _candy_," he spluttered, examining the cup as if trying to decide whether he should take another sip or not. In the end, he went back a second time and, better prepared for the result, enjoyed it much more.

"Good, isn't it?"

"Indeed! Though I'm not certain I want to know the sugar-to-coffee ratio."

"Let's just say that you might want to brush your teeth before they rot out of your head."

Spencer chuckled, took another sip, watched Helen run her thumb along the rim of her cup. Her broad grin had faded to a tiny smirk. Experience with that look—downcast eyes, shoulders rounded protectively over her drink—told him that she, like him, had a lot on her mind.

"Have you ever read Don Quixote?" she said, looking up.

"In English," he affirmed. "It's one of the greatest literary works of all time."

"Why haven't you read it in Spanish?"

His eyebrows furrowed. "Why do you assume I can even _read_ Spanish, much less a dense Baroque novel?"

Helen propped her chin in the cup of her palm and stared him down from across the table. "I just get that feeling," she said. "Tell me, Doctor, how many languages _do_ you speak?"

Spencer sat back in his seat. He had the sudden sense that he was being apprehended, but the words he should have used to deny Helen's speculations had vanished from his vocabulary. He could read most people, even before he had started studying profiling guides. The room, with its many guests moving about the stacks, seemed muted in comparison to the ringing in Spencer's ears. Fighting the urge to reach up and wipe his mouth—or make any gesture, really—he settled on an answer that closely resembled the truth.

"I only speak English fluently," he said, and hated the hesitation in his own voice, "but I can read in several. I'm best at Latin. My Spanish isn't great, though it would be practical to know it."

Helen seemed satisfied with this answer. He thought for a moment that he saw resolve in her gaze, but her expression relaxed before he could decide.

"Oh," she said. "Well, when was the last time you tried?"

"To read in Spanish?" Helen nodded. "A few years ago."

"Henry David Thoreau believed that all books should be read in their native language. Do you agree?"

"Ideally, yes, as the art of word choice often gets lost in translation."

"Would you consider reading _Don Quijote_ again?"

The real answer was that he _could_, but shouldn't because he had already lost so much time on his dissertation. Yet Helen caught him off guard again, as if she had developed the trick to addling his mental lexicon. This time it wasn't just her body language—the little tilt of her head, one eyebrow held just a fraction higher than the other—but the combination with her words. The lure had been there from the first day, when she'd brushed the chalk dust off of his back and told him not to forget his breathing. But the instant the book title rolled off Helen's tongue—not 'Quixote' but '_Quijote'_, phonetically correct and deliberately slow—Spencer felt his body tense as if she had pulled him wire-taut.

He stared hard at her mouth, his own hanging slightly ajar. And only after a long pause could he finally answer, "Yes."

Helen was on her feet and tugging him off of his chair. A few brief images passed over his eyes—grabbing his bag and coffee cup, following her past small clusters of working students, book stacks flying past so fast that they appeared to moving instead of he. By the time he regained full consciousness, Helen had left him standing at the head of an aisle. Spencer looked down. The hand that was not occupied by a coffee cup was shaking. Quickly, while Helen had her head turned in search for her book, he ducked behind the next stack and tugged at the crotch of his pants.

"This is not okay," he said in his quietest whisper, steeling himself against his uncooperative pituitary gland. "This is _not_ okay."

He did a little jog-in-place movement that did little to redirect blood flow but made him feel quite stupid. When Helen's hushed voice drifted over, he started.

"Spencer?"

Spencer shoved his shaking hand in his pocket, took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the stack of books.

"Did you find it?"

Helen shook her head, frowning. "It's not here. Someone must have checked it out. Would you be willing to come with me to get it? It won't take long."

"Get it…? As in, from—?"

"My dorm, yeah."

The answer was no. The _answer_—and he repeated it to himself over in his head, trying desperately to get the message through to his tongue—was that he was a teacher and she was a student and it didn't _matter_ that they were the same age because he had to assign her a grade at the end of the semester. The answer was that he couldn't afford to risk his good standing, that the way she was looking at him relayed nothing but a genuine interest in classic literature.

"W-where do you live?"

"Fleming. It's really close."

"Sure, okay."

They were heading out of the stacks, walking briskly toward the library's exit. Just as it did this morning, the humidity blasted them the moment they passed through the library doors. The difference was that it had begun to rain. Huge drops splattered down over their heads, splashing into the nearby pool with the sound of a fountain. Helen shoved her notebook up the bottom of her shirt to keep it from getting soaked.

"I wish I had brought an umbrella," she said.

Spencer, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and tie, could not aid her cause. Instead he said, "This storm is severely premature. The meteorologist this morning didn't predict showers until well after five."

Fleming house wasn't a long walk, but his shirt had soaked through when they arrived. She steered them down a narrow hallway, passing several doors until they reached the second-to-last one in the row. Whereas the other doors were somewhat plain, this one was an explosion of patterned paper and stickers. Like the others, this door had two names on it, but the tags were more elaborate.

"Well, that's certainly decorative," said Spencer, eyeing the 'Helen' and 'Andrea' name plates, to which someone had glued a border of pink lace.

"Yeah," Helen said as she fumbled to get the key in the lock. "I have a sort of—thing—for scrapbooking crafts."

"A thing?"

"Yeah. 'Obsession' might be a better word."

Upon hearing the embarrassment in her voice, Spencer assured her that he thought them quite unique ("And I mean that in a good way!"). Helen ushered him inside and turned on the lights. The first thing Spencer noticed, with his frazzled nerves and heightened senses, was that the room smelled of a light perfume. He supposed most girls' dorms had this feel to them. He had never been in one before now. Helen and her roommate, Andrea, had coordinated the colors of their bedspreads and highlights so that the room was a blur of pink, green, and purple. Half of the walls were covered in pictures that Helen had evidently designed on scrapbooking paper.

The other half had posters and different items taped up—play tickets, a map of campus—that Spencer didn't have time to take in before Helen had found the book in question. He took it from her and ran a hand over the faded cover. He flipped though it once. The corners had begun to peel, the pages yellowed.

Spencer looked at her. "This book is quite aged."

"It's been well-loved," said Helen. "Take good care of it."

"I will. Thank you for letting me borrow it…"

He thumbed to the first page as carefully as possible, opening it no more than he needed to, but the spine still crackled. For a moment, he let his eyes scan without reading. His mother's voice echoed back from his memory, _"This is the best part."_ He remembered her with Margery Kempe propped on her lap, one palm on the title page. "_You've got to stop yourself from diving in to it, Spencer. You're always in such a hurry to get it over with; you need to pause with the author, consider the effort it took to get here before you enjoy it."_

"_Feel the weight,"_ said her voice as Spencer lifted the book. _"The author is sitting with you. Teeter with her on the edge before you plunge in."_

He began to read. "_Desocupado lector: sin juramento me podrás creer que quisiera que este libro, como_—" he cut short when Helen gave a laughing snort. Startled, he looked down at her. "What?"

"Your accent is worse than I guessed," she said, and when he began to stammer about not being a native speaker, gently pulled the book down to her eye level so that she could read along. "_Juramento_," she said. "Say it with me."

Hesitant, Spencer obeyed, but a few carefully-annunciated words later, he grimaced and shook his head.

"My Spanish is terrible," he apologized.

"No, you're just inexperienced!" Helen insisted. Then—and now he knew that he had indulged beyond safety, that he was just one step too far from the door—Helen plucked the book from him and set it on the desk. She took his hands, which hung stupidly as if the book were still in them, and ran her thumbs along his wrists.

"Pay attention to the inflection: _Éstos son sus muñecas_," she said, and shook her head when he repeated it verbatim. "No, _Éstos son _sus_ muñecas_."

"_Éstos son _mis_ muñecas_."

Releasing him from her grip, she reached up and traced his lips. "_Éstos son sus labios._"

"_É-éstos son mis labios_."

She smiled. "See? It's not so hard."

Spencer disagreed, especially once she cupped the side of his face, his ear a perfect pivot point for the J of her thumb and forefinger. Until now, he had been resisting along the route. As her superior, he faced what might come of such a confrontation, what might come of following his hormones instead of his head. But when he leaned into her touch, collapsed against it like his neck had given way, his split conscience merged back to one. He wanted this. He wanted Helen, her purple-painted fingernails on his skin, her weight pulling him down, her heels in the small of his back—

"Helen—"

"Is this okay?" she said, and he realized that she was not asking for an ethical analysis; she wanted his permission.

Spencer became aware of a few things at once: that his fingers, unable to hang idly at his sides any longer, had hooked into the frontmost loops of her belt and twisted there; that his tie was getting looser and his slacks tighter. Helen took this as an answer.

He struggled to find his words, but once he did his throat closed in on them. Helen forced the wasted breath out in a startled wheeze when she stuck the tips of her fingers into the back of his waistband. Then, in a quick gesture, she dragged them around to the front until she had jerked his hips forward. Their thighs bumped together. The desk caught Spencer around the back of the knees and he almost toppled over it—would have, had she not grabbed his tie and pulled his mouth down over hers.

His first thought was a silent thank-you to whatever higher power that this was not his first kissing experience. It had been long enough ago that the sudden taste of another's saliva—here, almost-but-not-quite stale coffee—startled him. Unlike Christie Morris, who had been four years older and just a little bit tipsy when she had accosted him at the winter formal (which he had only attended in order to write an article for the school paper), Helen didn't have braces that knocked against his teeth. She also wasn't wearing a skimpy little dress, but this was good because he was one well-placed stroke away from coming and didn't need any extra motivation.

He felt Helen jolt against him when he finally opened the kiss. She yanked his sodden shirt out of its neat tuck in his pants, dragged her nails along the ridges of his back, pressed her hips harder into his as he ran his palms up the backs of her thighs. The blood had all but drained from his head, but the thought still occurred when he felt Helen begin to fumble with his belt:

_slow down._

When he spoke, it sounded like a panicked groan against her open mouth: "Wait—"

Helen detached herself from him with a little effort, wiped the spit off on the back of her hand. She was struggling to keep her chest from heaving. "Is this okay?" she said again.

"I'm just not sure what—" He broke off his ragged statement, then settled. "I'm not sure what you want me to _do_."

"What I—? _Listen_." Helen smiled and shook her head and kissed his Adam's Apple. Her body curled against his frame, and Spencer had one last second of lucidity before he felt her lips on his ear. "Spencer, I want you to _fuck_ me."

There was one millisecond where Spencer thought he could catch himself. One millisecond, and the next was all the time he had to stifle the moan that rose up from the very bottom of his belly. He kept it back until it rocked past his ribcage, caught in his mouth, and burst out as a sharp, pained gasp. What should have been a spectacular moment was punctured by horror as Spencer processed that his underpants were very warm, and very wet.

Christ, he just came in his pants. Helen was going to fuck him and he came in his _pants_.

He had to get _out_ of here.

Legs trembling, struggling to support his weight, Spencer slid out from between Helen and the desk as gently as he could.

"Spencer, what—?" Helen began, aghast, but Spencer shook his head and she quieted.

He couldn't meet her eyes. He shouldered his bag and took _Don Quijote _from the desk.

"I—I can't," he stammered. "I've got to leave. I'm—sorry."

Spencer didn't slow his half-shuffling run until he had locked the door of his apartment behind him.

He stripped down to his underpants and stepped into the shower without turning the bathroom light on. Even before Spencer moved under the shower spray, his sticky shorts were reluctant to peel off. Disgusted, he forced them down to his ankles and kicked them off by the drain.

xXx

**TBC**


	3. Part III

A/n: Please see Part I for notes, disclaimer, acknowledgments, etc!

Disclaimer: I own no part of this piece and make no profit.

* * *

><p><em>Part III<em>

Hindsight was not kind to Spencer. In truth, he would not likely have followed through with it once they began to get into the motions, but he had done enough. The best justification he had crafted was that sex drive could literally (albeit marginally) impair one's judgment.

What an excuse. He may as well have blamed it on the rare caffeine he'd consumed in the library beforehand.

Twelve desks were vacant when Spencer arrived to teach the following class. This was not extraordinary, except that Helen's seat was among them. His momentary relief at not having to face her expired with remembering that she had never missed his class before—and, as she had told him proudly, had never missed any lecture thus far in her college career. Being her first cause for absence was not an honor Spencer had anticipated, and denying his participation made him feel even worse. Somehow in the hour in a half lecture, in which he stood at the front of the room and explained the comparison tests for improper integrals until the students' eyes had unfocused, Spencer convinced himself that this would lead to Helen failing class, dropping out of school, getting evicted from her home, and having to roam Pasadena as a bar tender.

In times of crisis, the "slippery slope" fallacy need not apply. He had ruined her life with his over-eager penis and he was to blame if she could never see him again.

xXx

Helen appeared at his office hours that same day. Spencer had been revising his lesson plan for the next class, as nobody seemed to have absorbed his last lecture. He looked up at the knock on the doorframe, jumping only when he recognized the sound's source.

"A little anxious, Doctor?" she said, and in a voice that may have relayed amusement had she not been frowning.

Immediately Spencer stood, almost knocking his chair over in the process. He opened his mouth to begin begging for mercy, only to be silenced when she raised her hand.

"No, don't even start." Helen crossed the threshold into the room, nudged the door shut behind her, and deposited herself into the creaky chair before his desk. She nodded at him. "Sit down."

Spencer sat. His fingers twisted together under the shield of his desk.

Helen brushed away a curl that had escaped from her braid. "I'm here to apologize for yesterday."

"You're apologizing to _me_?"

She nodded. "I thought that you were on board with the… idea, just judging by how we hit it off. I didn't realize that you were uncomfortable. If I had, I wouldn't have pushed. I'm sorry for that."

Spencer realized that his mouth was hanging and closed it, but knew that if he opened it again, an apology would be all he could voice. Helen did not seem to mind his silence. She let it simmer in the space between them for a few long seconds, during which she considered him and picked at a loose thread in the hem of her sleeve.

"I'm here to ask," she said, "if you ran off because you weren't interested and didn't want to _hurt_ me, or because you were my teacher and were worried about getting your ass kicked out of school. Either or both is fine. I just need to know."

Spencer coughed. He didn't intend to tell her why he had escaped so quickly. The little details needed not haunt him in any other form, but he could spare the overarching truth. "The—the latter. If my superior were to ever find out, I could be reprimanded as far as expulsion from the doctorate program. The benefits of the act didn't outweigh the potential consequences. Though I wouldn't want to hurt you, either."

"I see. Then you might still be interested if you were no longer responsible for my grade."

He appraised her from across the desk. "Um—well, yes. I would be… interested."

"Then pick a date, because you are officially no longer my teacher. Congratulations."

"What?" Spencer sat back, hands instinctively flying for the arms of his chair and gripping as if he might topple out of it. "You mean you switched out of my—"

"Yes. Pretty much the second you left my room."

He had begun to wonder if speechlessness was just a side effect of being around this woman. Spencer's first reaction was to shake his head and tell her that he couldn't participate in this plan. It was too much at this time in his life, too far from his path of comfort and he couldn't afford to get caught up in something unfamiliar. Then he considered that many successful people had sex on a regular basis, and his defense didn't hold.

"I'm sorry I've caused your academic schedule so much hassle," he said, having found no better response.

"To be honest, it wasn't much of a sacrifice." Helen's expression softened. "You're a pretty horrible teacher, Spencer. I only stayed in your class for so long because I was still deciding whether or not I wanted to screw you."

Spencer raised his eyebrows, undecided as to whether he should be honored or offended.

"I have just one question now." When he didn't offer permission to ask, she did so. "I figure that with three PhDs, you have to be some sort of genius. And if that's true, it makes sense that you graduated at least a little early from high school. How old are you, exactly?"

He paused, considered, scratched a phantom itch on the underside of his knee. "Nineteen," he said, slowly.

"Holy shit, are you serious?"

"… yes."

"Are you a virgin?" she blurted, her face reddening.

"I thought you only said one question." He grimaced when Helen frowned at him again. If consent required full disclosure, then there was no point in keeping quiet now. "Yes."

He almost added that she was the forth woman to proposition him, but held back. Two of his offers had been sexual favors in exchange for him helping them cheat on exams. The other was a twenty-something he had met at a Chili's To Go in Nevada. He had been sixteen, had bumped into her while waiting for his order, and was telling her the nutritional differences among the three basic types of salad dressing when she had asked if he wanted to bring her home.

That last one may have been a prostitute. In Las Vegas it was sometimes hard to tell.

"It doesn't really matter," Helen said, shrugging. "Mostly I was just curious—I know I pretty much assaulted you, but you seemed a little surprised even for someone who wasn't expecting to get laid. But really, it just means that I'll have to cash in the 'one free all-night sexile' coupon that my roommate gave me for Christmas."

Spencer shifted uncomfortably at Helen's smile. "Why do you need an all-night coupon?"

"I wouldn't want to kick you out after your first time. What kind of memory would that leave you?" She stood to leave. "But don't expect the favor to continue after this first one. My roommate's not _that_ patient."

The implication of multiple meet-ups made his leg jerk under the desk. She didn't see it, but the thud of Spencer's knee against wood and his sharp breath told her enough.

"Friday night, then?"

Spencer paused in wincing and rubbing his knee to shoot her an apologetic look. "Can we make it _next_ Friday night?"

"I guess so. What for?"

"Because I need to prepare—uh, my dissertation. I really need to get the draft finished, I don't want to be worrying about it."

"Fair enough. I'll see you soon, Spencer."

"Sure." As she began to leave, Spencer remembered that he had packed _Don Quijote_ into his bag this morning. "Oh, wait!"

Helen turned, and he dove into his bag, returning a moment later with the book. As he stood and handed it across the desk, Helen hesitated.

"You don't want to tackle it after all, huh?"

"No," he answered. "I've finished it. You were right—the original text was far more intriguing than the English version."

He would have liked to launch into an analysis of the consequences of direct translation, but the look of sheer perplexion on Helen's face shut him up. Instead he forced a smile and watched her depart.

It was not until five minutes later, when he had gone back to detailing his schedule, that the first wave of alarm struck him upside the head. He dropped his pencil, closed his eyes, and listened as it rolled across the desk and bounced across the floor. The sound pulled away the screen that he had set up between his brain and the "real world", leaving him with a few stark facts:

He had just agreed to engage in sexual relations with a (now former) student of his class. She had implied that such relations might occur more than once. Outside of his thorough knowledge of textbook anatomy, he had no experience with the female reproductive system.

Spencer stood and packed his bag. His mind flipped through the library catalog and building layout, struggling to plan a route that would take him to the human sexuality section without being seen.

xXx

Though each day stretched out longer than he could bear, the first of the two weeks was gone before Spencer had time to consider his situation. He spent most of his time hunched over his paper in a library cubby, rifling through hand-written pages and dragging lines of text from the tip of his pencil. Helen had unknowingly timed her coffee introduction perfectly; during the week he spent a grand total of twenty-eight minutes waiting for coffee, and five minutes waiting in line at the cream and sugar table. Aside from forcing him to pee every hour or so (and costing a rather large sum of money), coffee benefited Spencer in every way. It was more potent than tea at his apartment, cheaper than the designer teas he could get at the café, and tasted far better when overwhelmed with sugar. It also kept him from falling asleep at the desk, which had happened so often beforehand that the security guard knew his name from waking him up at closing time.

Spencer finished his dissertation draft by his self-imposed deadline, then turned his attention to editing. Crossing out and rewriting lines, however, did not prove mind-encompassing enough to keep thoughts of Helen from distracting him. On Monday, she pried him away from a textbook on corollaries and steered him out of the library for lunch. Aside from a final "See you Friday!" when they parted, she didn't mention their future rendezvous. They ate lunch by the cafeteria windows, watched the rain attempt to drown the campus, and talked about literature. Spencer was so exhausted with his paper that he was glad to push math and science out of his brain in favor of Dante's _Inferno_.

His relief did not last long. That same night, he awoke in a panic from a nightmare: He and Helen were in bed, and Helen had just told him to put a condom on when he realized that he had never tried it before. The little square packet kept slipping in his sweaty fingers when he tried to open it, even after he wiped his hands on the bed sheets. Helen lay on her back beside him, one hand shoved down the front of her green polka-dotted underpants and the other tracing circles across her thighs.

"_Hurry up before I finish the job myself,"_ she snapped.

"_I'm trying, I just need—" _

He broke off with a frustrated growl as the packet fell onto his naked lap for the third time. Frustrated with his clumsiness, he finally gave up and tore the packet open with his teeth, then fished the condom out with one finger. Though in his dream logic he knew that he had ripped a tiny hole in the latex, he ignored this thought and rolled it on anyway.

The very next scene, which had skipped any and all pleasurable parts, Helen was screaming at him in his office while he shook his head and gaped and tried to stifle his sobs behind both hands. She clutched her giant pregnant belly and cried, _"Don't you know you have bad genes, Spencer? How could you let this happen? Don't you know you have bad genes?"_ And Spencer just shook his head and stared and cried _"I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it—"_

The next morning, Spencer biked the half-mile to Walgreens and bought a pack of condoms. He knew that the teenager at the check-out counter couldn't care less about his sexual endeavors, but he still couldn't raise his chin enough to meet her eye when she told him to "Have a pleasurable day!"

xXx

Spencer spent his free time in the library for the rest of the week, arriving early and leaving only for class and closing. He brought a bag lunch, took naps at his cubby when the caffeine from his myriad of coffees wore thin, and felt like a stranger in his apartment upon returning home late. Those who knew him did not see his sudden influx of work as a concern—the graduate community at large knew that he was on track to finish his dissertation early before heading off to Academy.

He was glad for this mask because it meant that his students and all others left him alone, for fear or ruining some brilliant thought before he could translate it to the page. The table, littered with pages and academic journals, acted as something of a shield and made it easy for Spencer to slip a copy of _Scintillating Sex – A Beginner's Guide_ into the rest of his books. He still jumped and covered the page with his hand whenever someone spoke nearby—a gesture unnecessary, given that he was already bent over his reading with the walls of his study cubby protecting his work from prying eyes—but he was adapting better than anticipated. And he was certainly _learning_.

There was so much written about human sexuality and sex practices that Spencer was overwhelmed when he first began stuffing books under his jacket and ferrying them from the stacks to his desk. For every aspect of sex, every issue with sex, every lawsuit and every position, there was some scholarly journal written in so much detail that he had to read almost at full speed to absorb it all. By Wednesday's end, he began to wonder what the parents of CalTech students would think if they knew where their tuition was going.

Some of what he read comforted him—his overexcitement, for example, happened to many young males, and could be regulated with a few choice practices. His dream had made him more deliberate in his research, in his determination to please Helen without ruining it for both of them. But certain side effects came with being buried in a book of kama sutra. He spent most of the time between Tuesday and Friday half-aroused and feeling like he did when he was thirteen and in college and surrounded by beautiful, busty women who wanted his brain instead of his penis. It was somewhat uncomfortable, and made standing up in front of a class even less enjoyable than usual (though the anxiety of public speaking helped more than not).

By Friday, he had so stuffed his brain with sexual practices and statistics that they rolled over his eyes all day. More than once he caught himself on the edge of what would have been a humiliating Freudian slip, and once the last of his students had left from his office hours, he slouched back at his desk in relief that he had made it. Though each day this week had crept agonizingly slow, the week was gone before Spencer could assure himself that he was ready. Class finished, then lunch, and by the time he met up with Helen for dinner at a nearby deli he could not keep from worried babble—ramblings about math and, when she mentioned her Irish Literature class, James Joyce. If she could sense his anxiety, she let him know neither by voice nor when he caught her surveying him over the brim of her water glass.

Spencer picked at his French fries, dipping more than chewing, pinched his leg under the table to keep his nerves in check. It was beyond him to be cool and collected—all previous trials in that department had failed, as proven by his high school experiences—but he would not let himself dissolve. As long as he trusted in his research, he would be fine. Perhaps not as well off as he would like, but fine.

There were condoms in his shoulder bag and a low swoop in the camisole beneath Helen's blouse. They split the bill and headed into the rain, which had not stopped battering them since that first day. And just like that first day, their clothes were saturated by the time they reached Helen's room. Helen closed the door and turned on a lamp. She looked at him as he pushed his sopping hair out of his face.

Spencer had always felt in excess. From the time he was an infant, his mother could never force him into an itchy wool sweater. Fabrics rubbed up on his skin like a brillo pad, no amount of wriggling could stop the itching in his skin. His father used to sigh in exasperation when he found one of Spencer's sweaters in a heap and his little son escaping, shirtless, down the hall. Even now, the sticky of his metal wrist watch bothered him enough to wear it above his sleeve when he could.

His father was always concerned that something was wrong with Spencer, but his concerns of hypersensitivity were always overshadowed by his mother's insistence that he was perfect. His mother's voice would swell with affection as she claimed that Spencer simply had exquisite taste in clothing.

As much as Spencer appreciated his mother's faith, his tie still made his collar uncomfortably tight against his neck. His shirt was too scratchy, his wet hair too heavy and dripping down the curved groove of his back. He winced at the click of the door's lock.

"Are you all right?" Helen said.

"Yes." His stomach crawled in anxiety and excitement. "I feel fine."

"Good."

Helen gathered her damp curls into her hands and tossed them over her shoulder. She set her bag aside, then took his from his shoulder and propped it against hers. He watched, the muscles in his legs trembling, and wondered if sex was always so methodical. His skin prickled like he was sick with fever, and when Helen came close her breath was hot on his neck.

"Listen, Spencer," she said, causally loosening his tie and pulling it through the loop. "I don't care if you're a beginner. Everyone else might tell you what to do and how to do it, but I'm not going to baby you."

His brows contracted at the oddity of the comment, as he had never voiced such a complaint. He traced his tongue along the ridge behind his teeth before he answered, "I appreciate that."

She smiled. "I know you do. Now figure it out."

They were deliberately slow in undressing each other. They paused at each button, crept a little closer to the edge and waited. Spencer sensed that Helen was reveling at removing his clothes, almost strange in her satisfaction. She had gotten what she wanted and she was drinking it in bit by bit, victorious, letting her eyes meander over the gap in his shirt.

He had known that being ogled would make him uncomfortable, had reminded himself that mutual objectification was likely a normal part of non-romantic fornication, but he'd still rather be under the cover of bed sheets than standing and exposed. Instead of dwelling on his own inevitable discomfort, though, or on the fact that Helen was on the very last buttons of his shirt, he focused on his goals. He set his eyes on his hands. He felt his Adam's apple bob in his throat as Helen shrugged her blouse off her shoulders. And when he finally got the nerve to touch her, he cupped the angle of her jaw and she leaned into his hand.

Her eyes were dark and triumphant. Maybe she was just glad to be here with him. Spencer couldn't quite tell.

He had known that she would wait for him to move. She had brought him all the way here, twice, luring him because she knew he wouldn't be able to resist. In part, he almost wished that he could resent the motion. The calm manner in which Helen stroked the crest of his hip made him hesitant to relent, but he swallowed his apprehension. This time he initiated the kiss, tugged Helen close enough so that he could bend and press his lips to her temple. A funny sound echoed in her throat, a cross between a moan and a grumble, but he took his time. Spencer pulled back when Helen caught his mouth with hers, then leaned in and kissed her again.

It was only after he heard the click of metal on metal that he realized she'd been at his belt. Two swift pulls and it was undone. He had suspected that Helen might avoid touching his cock at first, and he was right; despite the sizeable strain of his member on the fabric, she somehow unfastened the button, dragged the zipper down, and forced his trousers to the floor.

"Your turn," she said, except the words sloshed together against his mouth.

Like his, her skin was flushed hot and sticky with the mix of perspiration and rainwater, but his narrow hips had let his pants fall away without issue. With Helen, it was only with effort on both sides—Spencer trying to be gentle and failing, and Helen yanking the fabric at her knees—that they finally got her jeans down far enough for Helen to kick them off. He had a surge of relief when he saw that her panties were purple, not polka-dotted as they had been in his dream. He peeled her damp camisole away and over her head, took off his unbuttoned shirt, and laid them both across her desk with her blouse (he didn't want them to get wrinkled). He had not been seen in his underwear since high school, not via accidental glance in the school locker room and not even by his doctor, but the dread he sensed this time was far more pleasant. Shamelessly they scrutinized the other's body, the contours and the lovely imperfections beheld only in private nakedness. He tried to wet his lips with his tongue, but found his mouth dry.

"Are you ready?" he said, startled by the solidity in his own voice.

Helen smiled in her purple panties and white cotton bra. "You tell me."

Outwardly calm as she was, Helen's breath still hitched when he touched the inside of her thigh, like she had expected him to start from the waist and work his way down. She shuffled closer, pressing flush against his frame, and hissed a sharp breath when he slipped a finger under the elastic. Face burning, Spencer eased into her and back out again, just once, just deep enough to elicit a whimper. He spread her wetness in a slow, slow circle around her clit. Then, because he liked the way she squirmed against him, he did it a second time.

"See what you can do?" Helen said, then let out a slow breath, her eyes closed tight. Her knees inched further apart as Spencer pressed back into her, wrist bent at an awkward angle. "And look what _I_ did—"

For the first time, he felt intentional contact as she circled her fingers around his cock through his boxer shorts. She slid her hand up and down twice, testing his response to her touch, and the half-choked noise that echoed in his throat was enough to open her eyes.

Spencer had been preoccupied, trained on his own hand, but he forced himself to meet her eyes when she released him to grab his wrist. She flushed—he imagined that he looked much the same—but her expression mirrored none of the anxiety that was surely in his own.

"I didn't even have to speak Spanish this time," she said, and they both smirked. Now she pulled his fingers out of her panties and tugged him over toward the bed.

Helen must have considered his fear of not lasting long enough, because she cut the foreplay so short that Spencer was almost disappointed. He quickly got over his initial reaction, though, when she laid back on the bottom bunk of the bed and motioned with a nod of her head for him to join her. His pulse magnified across his whole body with each footfall, so loud that he was sure Helen could hear it thumping in her ears, too. His legs bumped against the bed frame and he climbed up over her on his knees, leaning down to kiss her once he'd lined their bodies parallel. One of Helen's arms flew out to her bedside table as they kissed, opened the drawer, and withdrew a condom packet.

"I brought—in my bag, if—" he began, but stopped when she yanked him back down by the neck.

"So thoughtful," she said. "Save them. I got it this time."

Spencer paused in consideration of where to venture next. Helen lay below him, her hair spread out across the entire pillow like a massive black cloud. His hand looked pale against her skin in the light of the desk lamp, and he marveled in the softness as he traced a curve around the bottom of her bra. Before he could make his own decision as to how to proceed, Helen wrapped an arm around his neck, anchoring herself in place as she arched her back. Spencer, taking this as permission, steadied himself with one arm and sought the back of her bra with the other.

The clasp was a simple hook-and-eye, and though Spencer wished he had the chance to study it first, he still managed to unfasten it within a few seconds. For all his uncertainty and fumbling, the likely obvious rush in his motions, this feat earned him an appreciative look from Helen.

"Okay, _now_ I'm impressed," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Are you _sure_ you haven't done this before?"

Spencer actually laughed—the sound was subdued, stifled into a chuckle by his anxiety, but his smile was contagious. "I'm just… it's a slight of hand," he said, stopping himself from saying that he was 'good with his hands'.

"Ah, so it's a magic trick."

Helen sat up now, forcing him back, her bra hanging loosely on her shoulders. Spencer sat upright, and she scooted forward enough to hitch her ankles together behind his back. When she pulled her bra off and tossed it aside, he tried and failed not to look. Helen plucked his hand up from where it lay on the bed, traced her thumb across the inside of his palm until his fingers twitched from the contact, and pressed it to her mouth.

"You have beautiful hands," she said, and it was all Spencer could do to mutter a quiet "Thank you" before she guided him to her chest.

She heaved a sigh as Spencer cupped one breast in his palm, and moaned as he mirrored the gesture with the other. Then, for the second time, he felt her hand against his leg and had to bite his lip as she tugged his shorts down low enough to thread her fingers along his length.

Part of him wanted to speak. He wanted to moan her name, to tell her that this was so incredible, but voice had run off with his common sense and he couldn't even give her a soft _'yes'_ because his chest had hitched so hard that he wasn't sure he was even breathing.

Helen knew, of course. And more, she seemed to like him best when he was silent and his eyes were tight shut and he had her nipple pinched between two fingers. The veil had dropped between his mind and body, until he was somehow both numb and electric at once, and his hips jerked with each motion of her hand. Helen slowed and ceased after some immeasurable time, kissed him, and opened the condom packet.

Spencer had consented to this proposition with certain expectations, and a goal that may or may not have been a reach for his first time: to last long enough for Helen to finish first. But none of the literature he'd studied in the library had prepared him for environmental factors—confounding variables, so to speak. There were things he could have imagined on his own, like the fact that her hair kept getting caught in his mouth, or that he was too cold above the sheets and too hot below. Not twenty seconds after they began to find their rhythm, a sound exploded overhead so loud that Spencer actually jumped.

He thought it might be thunder, what with the rain beating the window from outside, but a moment later he realized it was music. Helen squinted over his shoulder at the doorway, as if she could see the perpetrator through the solid wood, and then growled in frustration.

"Ben _fucking_ Jackson," she hissed, stopped with Spencer's cock half inside her and her nails digging little crescent moons into his waist. "I have told that little shit to turn down his music so many times that I can't even stand it."

Spencer cleared his throat because he wasn't sure if his voice had returned. "Should we—um—remind him?"

Helen's eyes fell on him, eyebrows knitted together in annoyance that Spencer couldn't help but take blame for despite his complete innocence. "No, he's about ten minutes too late. I'll just scream at him tomorrow."

Spencer didn't answer. With the muffled bass thumping from the next room over, Helen forced him back down into the sheets and rocked her hips against him.

The second surprise was that Helen's bed was not conducive to fornication. It creaked just a bit at first, and Spencer wasn't concerned until they picked up their pace, at which point the joints of the bunk seemed to loosen and shake more and more with each motion. Spencer dutifully ignored it at first, but as it worsened, he began to wonder what the people on the first floor might be thinking. He hoped he wasn't interrupting their studying. Or better yet, that they weren't there at all. Helen didn't seem to care either way, but eventually Spencer flung out an arm and grabbed the edge of the windowsill. Then Helen grabbed his arm back and told him to stop thinking because it was distracting them both. He opened his mouth to insist that nobody could just stop thinking, only for Helen to shut him up again.

All of these considerations took place within the span of two minutes, two and a half at most. Spencer tried to postpone his climax and bring Helen's closer, but his fingers stumbled across the unfamiliar map of her body and soon he was overcome by sensation—the stick and pull of skin on skin, the burn that wasn't friction but built up low and hot in his belly. His head thrumming with the sound of his own breathing and of Helen's pleasure, Spencer let go of his ambition and clung to her as he came. She, in turn, caught his spluttered apology against her mouth before he could finish it.

"Don't even start with _that_," she warned him, propping herself up on one elbow. "Most people don't last long their first time."

Spencer nodded. He was still struggling to breathe as he answered, "Males only last about seven minutes on average."

"Is that all?" He nodded again, and Helen smirked. "Well, then we're just going to have to practice. But before we worry about _you_—"

Spencer gave an exhausted little groan as Helen lifted herself off of his length and flopped down beside him on the too-small bed. She pushed his hair behind his ear, kissed him, and draped one leg over his torso.

"I am _so close_," she whispered, right in his ear, and Spencer actually _trembled_. "Will you finish me, Doctor?"

Spencer did. And it was some time later, when he was three fingers deep inside of her and had her writhing between him and the sheets, that he finally said her name. He said it once, with his forehead on her shoulder and his wrist burning from the motion of the awkward angle, and again when her quick, labored breaths cracked into a moan so loud that he was sure everyone on the floor could hear his success.

xXx

**TBC**

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><p>An: As a side note, I would like to thank all of you who have reviewed this story so far! I never in my wildest dreams imagined that people would take the time to read it, much less like it and leave feedback, too! I really do appreciate it. You've made this pain in the ass story worthwhile. :D**  
><strong>


	4. Part IV

A/n: This is the end of the road, folks! Thanks to everyone for their insight, help, and for reading. :)

I realize the end may be very confusing to some readers... er, if you have any questions, please ask!

Please see first post for disclaimer, notes, and acknowledgments.

* * *

><p><em>Part IV<em>

Spencer was asleep, tucked into the corner where the bed met the wall, when the fire alarm sounded. In his first moment of waking he thought that he might be in a confused dream, for the room was cast in a reddish glow and the siren was wailing throughout his head. In the second moment, Spencer did not realize where he was. His arms were crossed over himself, his body pinned against the base of the windowsill, the sheets tangled tight around his legs. Then he heard Helen's muffled swear behind him and realized with a jolt of panic that he had not imagined the last few hours.

The next minutes moved rather quickly. Helen had already leapt out of bed and pulled a pair of cotton shorts over her underwear by the time Spencer sat upright, digging knuckle into the corner of his eye and remembering with a grimace that he had forgotten his contact lens case.

"Come on, we've got to go outside," she said, tossing his shirt at him from across the room.

"Do you think there's actually a fire?"

"Probably not, but let's go. I think the rain's letting up anyway."

His ears aching with the siren, Spencer heaved himself up and began to dress. His joints felt stiff from a combination of the lumpy bed and his exertions. He tried to stretch out his legs as he bent to reach his shoes.

Halfway through pulling his pants up, he realized that he was face-to-face with a picture of Helen's parents. She had stuck the four-by-six onto a sheet of purple matte paper with double-sided tape and pinned it to the wall below a picture of a smiling border collie. Helen had inherited her father's tanned skin and her mother's eyes. Her father's thick brow seemed to contract at the sight of the unfamiliar boy dressing himself in his daughter's presence, and Spencer lingered only a second longer over his sturdy build (strong enough to snap him in half, probably) before he turned his back to the photo and dressed as fast as he could. If Helen saw his perturbed expression (unlikely, given that the alarm was now flashing like a strobe light), she didn't say anything. Together they ducked out of Helen's bedroom and joined the row of students trickling out the back door of the building.

Helen was right about the rain, for which Spencer was glad. The downpour had dwindled, but a thick mist still glowed off the tall light posts as they shuffled outside. The resident assistants, most in their pajamas and sneakers, were ushering the disgruntled students toward the back of the parking lot so that the fire truck could pull up along the main drive when it arrived. Spencer blinked, grateful for the moisture because his eyes were itchy and dry beneath his contacts. He didn't realize until he almost walked into Helen that they had stopped with a group of Helen's friends.

"Hey guys! This sucks, doesn't it?" she said, smiling despite the bitterness of her comment.

Two faces turned from greeting Helen to scrutinizing Spencer, who hadn't anticipated meeting Helen's peers and had no idea how to say hello, much less explain why he was there at three in the morning. He felt suddenly out of place in his more professional wardrobe, despite being roughly the same age as everybody else. A quick glance downward told Spencer that he had missed a button while fastening his shirt; it hung slanted on his wiry frame. Helen introduced him to Andrea and Mike. Spencer recognized Andrea at once as Helen's roommate, as several pictures of her with various friends and family hung in the dorm room. Mike, a young man with thick square-rimmed glasses and a red plaid shirt, shook Spencer's hand and said, "What brings you to Fleming House this late?"

Before he could think of a response, Andrea had cut in and said, smirking, "He's Helen's _friend_. The one I was telling you about…?"

"What—? Oh, _right_, the teacher. You graduating soon, man?"

Spencer faltered, his tongue frozen in his mouth. If Helen had told them that she was sleeping with an ex-professor, which it seemed that she had, then others could easily find out. If Dr. Wagner were to hear the gossip—

"He's presenting his dissertation in a few weeks!" said Helen, who saw that Spencer was too dumbstruck to find his own words.

Mike nodded approvingly, awed by Helen's success in seducing her calculus TA. "That's cool. Better watch out for Helen, though, she can be a little crazy if you know what I mean."

Spencer didn't know what Mike meant, but he forced a smile and a laugh nonetheless. No group had ever accepted him so easily, even with his rumpled slacks and his crooked shirt, but Spencer didn't dwell on the good feeling. He kept Helen in his peripheral vision as everyone else watched the fire truck roll up to the building. A group of giggling freshman ogled the firemen as they jumped from the back of the truck with their baggy yellow pants held up by suspenders. Spencer paid them no heed, focused on watching Helen's curly hair grow bigger and puffier in the humidity. He had hoped that their relations had meant enough for her to keep them secret, but apparently sleeping together wasn't a sacred act anymore.

He wondered how much she had told them, and how much she would tell them once he left in the morning. Would she illustrate their night in vivid detail, highlighting his nervous fumbling and foolish determination to last long enough to please her, or speak only in vague terms? He wondered, growing ever more embarrassed beside her as the other three speculated that someone had set the alarm off by overcooking their popcorn, if Helen had told them that he was virgin.

Spencer's newfound feelings of betrayal lasted long after the firemen emerged from the building and proclaimed a false alarm, but they didn't keep him from reciprocating once they reached the dorm and Helen pounced on him once more.

He missed his goal again, and repeating the previous motions awakened a deep ache in his bones, but it was a notable improvement.

xXx

A week later, Helen followed him into his apartment for the first time. They had seen each other only a few times since the previous weekend, as Spencer had buried himself in revisions, but Helen had found him asleep in his library cubby and told him that they should meet again.

"It'll be a nice break from work," she said. "We can have lunch and I can get Andrea out of the room for a few hours, but then you have to leave."

Startled that she had moved from keeping him all night to kicking him out right away, Spencer asked what had prompted the change. Helen then explained that because midterms were just around the corner, the weekend meant that the students would have to fight for a place in the library and she could not afford to lose her spot.

"Which is really annoying," she continued, leaning against the half-wall of his cubby and distractedly twisting her braid, "because nobody obeys the quiet rules, so I don't even really get to study because everyone is talking anyway."

Despite his lingering sense of betrayal, Spencer jumped upon the closest solution that he could find, one that would keep them from rushing when all he really wanted was to slow down.

"Well, if you want a quiet place to study, you could always, um, study in my apartment. It's—I haven't got a roommate, so—it's pretty quiet." Spencer paused, then hastily added, "I don't mean to keep you all weekend, of course, I just mean that it might just be easier if we do it that way."

That was how Helen wound up at his apartment all weekend, pouring over her literature books at his kitchen table while he sat across from her and worked on finalizing his dissertation. She voiced her approval after wandering through each room, Spencer trailing behind her as if she were giving him the grand tour. He had tidied up a little before her arrival, but still feared that she might comment on his lack of enthusiasm for interior design. Compared to her highly embellished bedroom, his looked more like a warehouse. He had taped a poster rendition of Monet above the sink, and the vase of folded paper flowers on the kitchen table had been his mother's (was _still_ his mothers, regardless that Spencer had begun looking to sell the house).

"It could use a dusting, but at least the stove works," Spencer said. "My neighbor has a problem with his."

Helen withdrew her head from inside Spencer's bedroom and, having finished her inspection, set her bag down on the table.

"It's very nice, but I thought there'd be more books," she said.

"I don't buy them often, the library is very extensive," he said. He couldn't tell if she was teasing, so he replied in earnest and left out the part where buying books was a waste of money when he could just read them in the store.

They sat down at opposite sides of the table and began to work on their respective projects. Aside from the occasional sniffling noise, Helen was an ideal study mate. She read and marked her notes without much chatter, which Spencer appreciated while up to his neck in revisions. After about an hour, she asked where he kept the drinking glasses and got them both a drink. Soon thereafter, she procured a granola bar from her bag and, after Spencer declined to share it, ate it and shoved the wrapper into her pocket.

Spencer lost track of time. His ability to forget himself in the details of work had been something of a coping mechanism in the past, morphed over time into one of his greatest talents. It was well after nine by the time he looked up from his work and found Helen asleep. She snapped to attention at the sound of her name, the topmost page of her notes stuck to her face.

"I'll make dinner!" she exclaimed at once, almost comically peeling the sheet away from her cheek.

Helen had finished her book and was eager to move on from studying. Spencer half-watched her as she rummaged through his cupboards in search of something edible. Again, his embarrassment rose to the surface of his face as he realized that he hadn't bought groceries in some time. All but living in the library meant that he never had to walk more than fifty feet for a sandwich, and the green-tinged loaf of twelve-grain bread that Helen uncovered from his refrigerator would only result in stomach upset.

"There's soup… I think," Spencer said, sensing that she was beginning to give up. Helen turned immediately to the pantry. "On the bottom… in back."

His apartment wasn't _barren_. Spencer had neglected it more than usual this semester, but once the soup was bubbling on the burner and the smell of chicken noodle had diffused throughout the room, he felt more at home here than he had since Dr. Michelson demanded that he take up teaching as a supplement to his education.

Helen ladled the soup into two blue ceramic bowls, lifted one in each hand, and approached the table.

"No homework at the dinner table," she said.

"As I've been doing most of my work in the library, this hardly constitutes as _homework_," Spencer replied, nonetheless gathering his materials and setting them tenderly beneath his chair.

"It's a good thing you're cute, Doctor Reid. Enjoy your soup."

Helen sat down and moved Spencer's mother's vase of paper flowers aside to get a better look at him.

During dinner Helen nodded while Spencer re-explained the material she was learning in her new Calculus class. After one last decisive scrape of metal spoon on porcelain, they rose as one and headed straight for Spencer's bedroom. The Spencer of a few weeks past would never have imagined that he would develop such easy and wordless communication so fast. He still could not be sure exactly what he was thinking, going through with all of this. For an act meant to be almost mundane in its routine, he over-thought it until it may as well be rocket science.

Helen led Spencer into his room, which was much the same as the kitchen—meagerly decorated, but not quite cavelike. He forgot to raise the blinds this morning, but like the kitchen it was clean enough. The desk was a disaster, as to be expected, covered in a tablecloth of paperwork. As Helen had mentioned (with a touch of disappointment?), his book collection boasted only a handful of paperbacks, all on different areas of his thesis. A crochet blanket was draped over the back of the wooden chair. And on the wall, pinned above his bed with four blobs of no-residue poster adhesive, was—

"Nice map," Helen said.

"Thank you, it's—"

Spencer's sentence fell short as Helen jumped up onto his bed. Upon realizing what she was going to do, he opened his mouth to protest but closed it shut again. Part of being in a relationship, regardless of its design, meant certain sacrifices. Slightly unsteady on the mattress, Helen bounced to the head of the bed, reached a hand up, and stroked her fingers across South America.

"It's textured!" she exclaimed.

Spencer stopped biting his lip to reply, "Yes. I got it at the science museum when I was ten. It's… very fragile."

Helen meandered across the surface of the earth some more, unaware that the idea of finger oils smudging the print was arising in Spencer's stomach a horrible, nauseous feeling. The map was grand and had cost him a month's allowance to buy. Even if Helen spread her arms wide, the edges jutted out just past her fingertips.

"Ah, so this is what home feels like," she said, fingers pressed over Laredo, Texas.

Spencer nodded, some of his irrational frustration slipping now that he was engaged. "It's a very flat region, given its proximity to the Mexican Mountains. Unless you've got your finger on Lake Casa Blanca, in which case you're referring to a very _deep_ area."

"I used to swim there when I was little. With my sister." She hopped down from the bed and strode to where Spencer still stood with his hands jammed into his pockets. "Are you okay?"

His hands sprung free and found, as they always did, the outermost curve of her hips. He wetted his lips and nodded and said, "There's just a lot of work to do."

"I know what you mean."

Helen locked him in, hitching her fingers together behind his neck. They kissed. His lingering anxiety receded like the blood from his head.

"Let's take a break," she said. Her breath pattered against his mouth. "Ease some stress."

Spencer couldn't speak. His throat was tight, all but suffocating, and the pressure welled up in his lungs when he opened his mouth against Helen's and met her tongue. These actions were out of something else. He couldn't verbalize exactly what going through the motions meant to him other than the immediate and obvious answer, but his logical half had split into even more subdivisions. One part knew that he was nowhere near mature enough to handle the implications of this relationship, that he attached too easily and would resent Helen when she moved on. The other half said that he should get used to it because this was how things worked, wasn't it? Or had his reading lead him to believe in an illegitimate truth—one had to look for long-term support or nothing at all. It was possible that nobody ever walked away unwounded from a relationship based solely off of sex.

"Stop it," said Helen, sharply dragging Spencer back to present time.

He found his hands halfway up her shirt and froze, terrified that he had violated some procedural step. Startled and stopped in place, he said, "What?"

"Exactly what you did last time," she said. "Quit thinking so much."

Spencer scoffed, caught between amusement and exasperation. "One can't turn off one's brain at will!"

"Then think of _me_, at the very least. I can never tell what's going on in your big brain." Helen loosened Spencer's belt with two effortless tugs and slipped her hand down between his skin and the waistband of his boxer shorts. The little catch in his breath beckoned the smile that partly caused his seduction in the first place. "Ah, there we go. You know what I could use?"

It took Spencer an embarrassing amount of time to reply, "What?", but Helen enjoyed his struggling. Every little bit of him responded to her touch exactly as she would have it. She allowed herself a few moments at his expense, circled her fingers around him and tweaked her wrist in a slow rhythm.

Spencer could see the pulse beating in Helen's neck and was glad that she, despite her semblance of calm, was at least as psychically excited as he.

"A shower," said Helen. Spencer uttered a low groan of disappointment as she withdrew her hand from the inside of his pants. She turned her back to him and started for the bathroom door, which was situated just outside his bedroom. A few seconds after her departure, in which Spencer stood with his arms dangling stupidly and his jaw slack, he heard the sound of rushing water. Helen reappeared in the doorway, bare-shouldered and smiling. "Get the stuff and let's go," she said. "Unless you'd rather go back to your dissertation."

xXx

Shower sex, like so many other things Spencer thought he understood, turned out to be more difficult in practice. He was too hot under the spigot and too cold without it. Moisture hung in the air as vapor, tiny suffocating beads trapped, like him, between the curtain and the shower wall. And though at first his significant height over Helen made for awkward grappling and knee bending, once they found their rhythm Spencer discovered something that made the effort worth the claustrophobia.

This position offered him something that he didn't otherwise have in this relationship: control. Helen could grind her hips until the sharp curves of his pelvis bruised her, but Spencer had the advantage of angle. The responsibility carried him. He turned them both sideways against the water flow and propped her back to the slick tile. Helen's hair was splayed across her face; she let go of him just long enough to tie it back with an elastic. The double shadow of the shower curtain and Spencer's broad shoulders cast her skin even darker than in daylight, and Spencer could not resist the invitation of such a backward glow. His hands wandered wherever they pleased, overwhelmed with the sticky smooth of skin shining with water and sweat. He pressed his full length into her, jaw locked into a taut line of effort. Helen gasped. She braced one foot against the lip of the tub and bit her nails into his shoulders so hard that the marks would last for days. But the thought of little bleeding wounds on his shoulder blades—and every other thought—was brief in passing, muffled by the shower spray in his ears and Helen tight around his cock.

Spencer could do it. His confidence was peaking for the first time and the ache of effort had yet to register in his calves and quads. Much as he would love to keep stagnant like this, he had to move Helen forward before he went without her.

Helen recognized his craving, like being strung together so close had fused their minds as well. When she tried to help him out, inching her fingers down to the joint where their bodies met, Spencer reacted. He grabbed her hands and forced them away, shifting so that he could support himself with one hand and maneuver the other.

"Let me," said Spencer.

When Helen hesitated, Spencer took each of her wrists and set them at her sides. She peered down at whatever gap was left between them, then back up to Spencer. In the haze of the spray she looked dumbfounded, like she might not know him, and maybe she didn't. All she knew was studious Spencer with a newfound love for coffee and a dream of wielding an FBI badge. She didn't know where he came from because she never asked about his past, and she didn't know that his resolve had never failed to save him when all hope was lost. What she did know, upon studying him through the moisture clinging to her eyelashes, was that Spencer Reid was going to make her come.

He grappled with the uncomfortable angle for just a moment before he found her clit. Helen was hot and slippery and ready for his hands, and the groan that echoed through the bathroom almost set him off. Worried about friction from the shower, Spencer spread her wetness around her clit with the flat base of two fingers until he was sure it wouldn't hurt. Helen's fingers clenched as he found his rhythm, itching to touch him but eager to follow direction, her chest heaving. Spencer bent and took one hard nipple between his teeth. Helen braced herself harder against him as he mimicked the activity of his fingers with his tongue, and all but cried out as he restarted the motion of his hips. He went in fast and drew back slow, measuring the time against the length of her breaths and the pulse of his fingers. His mouth, his tongue, roamed up from her breast to the shallow basin of her clavicle, then to the beat in her neck.

He almost didn't hear her when she whispered, "Harder." Spencer obeyed. He laid into her as far as he could, ran circles against her clit until he thought his wrist would strain, and was only just starting to feel fatigued when the swell began to rise in her throat. It began as a deeper breath. Her mouth twisted and parted and she bit down on her lip. Spencer braced them both against the wall and rocked harder, rubbed his fingers faster and faster until Helen's chest arched against him and she moaned right into his ear. Undone.

She lost control of herself and let her hands grip his thighs, urging him harder still. Helen came for what felt like a whole minute but was really ten seconds or so, and when she was done she gasped and heaved some more. The show had left him barely in control of himself. And before she had even landed Spencer was coming hard, his last fiber of strength ignited when Helen tightened around him. He spluttered because there was too much water in his mouth and came and came and coughed when it was finally over.

Spencer let his chin fall on Helen's shoulder. Her arms came up to meet him, pressing him down until their bellies were flat together and he was all the way inside. Helen sighed. Her fingers were in the damp hair behind his ears, the banging in her chest echoing through his limbs.

xXx

They went on like this for weeks more, meeting up at Spencer's apartment to study and fuck. Sometimes they did it in the shower, more often they did it beneath the grand map above Spencer's bed, and just one time they did it in the kitchen.

One afternoon midway through April, having just flopped over onto his back, Spencer said that which had been tugging at him since the beginning: "Where are we going with this?"

Helen had yet to catch her breath. His manner of voice seemed to pull her out of the blurry, soft aftermath of climax. She sat up on her elbows to look down at where he lay by her hip, shirtless with his khakis hanging off his pelvis.

"What do you mean?"

"I, um—" Spencer wiped his mouth on the coverlet and cleared his throat. "When the semester is over, what do we do?"

"_You're_ going across the country. What's left to talk about?"

In that single statement was the accusing tone for which he had been grasping, trying to sort of from the background noise. This idea had not been his, the terms had been laid out in the beginning, and somehow it would be his fault that it should end. It was in the air now, the wedge in the gap of Spencer's feelings that split him like splintering wood. The half that, even now, would lift him to kiss the inside of her thigh and tell her she was beautiful competed directly with the side that sang '_I told you so!_' and urged him to leave.

Helen was right, of course. In a month and a half he would graduate with his third doctorate and pass in his one-way ticket to Virginia. The rest of his future was remarkably unclear, despite what the corresponding agent had explained over the phone, and it felt as if the only thing he knew for sure was that his future would be Helen-less.

Attachment is natural. Spencer knew from the start, with his lifelong themes of abandonment, that he would latch on to her regardless of their actual relationship. And to the merit of this side, he did not want to partake in this relationship forever. The more time they spent together, the more he resented the manner in which she looked at him. Her triumphant glances in his direction, which he supposed she did not realize she was transmitting, and her idea that thinking should be reserved for academic purposes alone, sparked the fuse that told him to turn his shoulder. Spencer and Helen got along well enough even after the small talk had been whittled down. She was encouraging where he needed a boost of morale, and her love of learning in excess made her a remarkable listener. Spencer liked Helen—loved her, just a little bit—but the looming detachment had scraped up a scab which had not healed enough to leave him unmarked.

Helen was still looking at him in that funny way, a cross between a pout and a thoughtful frown skewing the symmetry of her mouth. He was doing it again, that act which need not apply once one crossed the threshold to the bedroom. Spencer turned his gaze to a stray thread that had escaped the stitching of his comforter. A few seconds edged by and then Helen sat up and began to dress.

"I have to go to class."

"I know," said Spencer, softly.

"We'll practice your presentation when I get back, okay?" said Helen from where she now stood at the foot of the bed, wrestling into her jeans.

"Thank you."

Spencer set his head down while Helen flattened down her frazzled hair in the mirror, straightened her shirt, grabbed her backpack, and left him. He lay for some time after, alone and half-naked on his bed, staring backwards up at his map. The places he wanted to visit looked back down at him in textured color. So this was finality, the final click of the door where you know you've had it. He was not being shipped off, but the definitive sense of solitary abandonment was there.

Spencer rose and straightened the blankets. He slipped a sweater over his head, cleaned up the wrapper and paper towels that sat between his room keys and a map of the Virginia metro station on his bedside table. Then he went to his desk, cast the room into a yellowish glow with the lamp, and sat down with a sheet of stationary and a pencil. After just a moment's hesitation, he set the graphite to the smooth, clean face and began to write: "_Dear Mother…"_

xXx_  
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**END.**


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